The Time of Our Lives

Although I am an actor based in Australia, I must admit that I don’t really watch a lot of Australian productions nowadays. For me most of the Australian productions fall into just a few broad categories:

• Reality TV
• White-wash “Australian” dramas that do not represent the modern Australian society
• Dramatised Australian true stories – and a lot of times are related to crimes
•  Comedies and satires– sometimes low taste comedies

Since moving to Australia just over a decade ago, I have only watched and follow a few Australian drama productions.

“Sea Change” was the first one I fell in love with and still watch a lot. It is my favourite show to watch when I am doing my ironing. The first season of “The Secret Lives of Us” was also great. Deborah Mailman and Claudia Karvan have made the show so watchable. “Love My Way” was another Claudia Karvan show that I followed although similar to “The Secret Lives of Us” I only liked the first season. “East West 101” was another brilliant show that I think one should not miss. It shows a more realistic Australian society and investigates more interesting issues. Since “East West 101” I haven’t been watching a lot of Australian dramas because they just don’t interest me. I will watch odd episodes from time to time here and there (especially the ones I was in) but I never follow them. Then came “The Time of Our Lives”.

When ABC first advertised it, I understood that it is another Claudia Karvan show and this raised my interests in it. I have a lot of respect for Claudia Karvan although I have never really met her (except for the forum that I went to with her as the guest but I had never spoken to her). She strikes me as a person who doesn’t like to conform to common views but works hard to break the norm. As a person who tries to fight stereotypes and “be myself” both as an actor and a person, I was naturally drawn to Claudia Karvan as an actor and producer. As such, I was determined not to miss this show – especially when it is on ABC.

“The Time of Our Lives” surrounds a family with a few grown up siblings. Two of them were blood brothers, one of them was adopted from Vietnam, and the other was a foster care child. The combination is interesting enough and so are the characters. There are still some quite cliché storylines but then the fact that it deals with these storylines in a day-to-day kind of manner instead of overly dramatising them, the show become a lot more convincing. Claudia Karvan played as Caroline who was a lawyer who gave up her career to build a perfect family. But she eventually had to face the fact that no matter how hard she pretended, the family was far from perfect. Her character change from the first episode up to the current episode displayed a journey of compromising with life without comprising her view of life. I think that was great.

The show also dealt with some quite heavy weight issues such as how could a foster child re-establish his relationship with his own mother? Could an adopted child from Vietnam ever fully recognise herself as an Australian, when she knows that she is Asian? How do you savage a life torn apart by you without tearing yourself apart? These are all very demanding storylines. They could not be over-played or shallowly interpreted. I think the production managed to find a great cast to tell the stories for us. Some of the names are basically who’s who in real Australian acting – Claudia Karvan, William McInnes, Justine Clark, Shane Jacobsen, Stephen Curry etc. Even the supporting cast were some of the best in Australian acting – Tina Bursill, Mick Molloy, and Pia Mianda to name a few.

What I also like about “The Time of Our Lives” is that it shows a more representative Australian society – aka it is not a white washed “Australian” society. Also actors of different ethnicities were not stereotyped in the roles they are playing. This enabled me to relate to this world a lot better than shows that only show hunky surfers and blonde babes living on the beach a lot better. Also the writing has so much more depth when it is not just about insecure people trying to sleep with insecure people to make themselves secure.

I hope ABC would continue to produce original quality dramas like “The Time of Our Lives” and I will definitely continue to sit in front of the TV every Sunday night at 8.30 to watch the show until it is finished. Even so, it is already high on my priority list as a must have TV series for my DVD collection.